LibGuides: 12 No Sugar: Stolen Generations

12 No Sugar

Year 12

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(Fogarty, 2015)

Native Settlements Map

(Australian Human Rights Commission, 1997)

Moore River Native Settlement

Mogumber Heritage Committee. (1992). Mogumber Heritage Committee, part of the Wheatbelt Aboriginal Corporation proudly presents a pictorial collection of the Moore River Native Settlement 1917 to 1965. Moora, WA: Mogumber Heritage Committee.
Provides information on the establishment of the settlement in response to WA legislation.

Bringing Them Home Report

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. (1997). Bringing them home: Chapter 7. Retrieved from https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-chapter-7
Report of the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.

Legislation

South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council. (2012). Impacts of law post 1905. Retrieved from http://www.noongarculture.org.au/impacts-of-law-post-1905/
Arguably, the Aborigines 1905 Act (WA) has had the most significant impact on Noongar people, an impact that lasted well into the 1960s and 70s.
Aborigines Act 1905 (5 Edw. VII No. 14). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/download.cgi/au/legis/wa/num_act/aa19055evn14203
"An act to make provision for the better protection and care of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Western Australia."
Delmege, S. (n.d.). A trans-generational effect of the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA): The making of the fringedwellers in the south-west of Western Australia. Retrieved from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MurUEJL/2005/6.html
For persons of mixed descent, who primarily lived in the southwest of the State, the Act had a profound impact. It enabled the removal of anyone deemed “Aboriginal native” to a Reserve and any child under 16 deemed “Aboriginal native” to a State institution.

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This confusing extension of the definition of ‘Aboriginal native’ meant that although the children of ‘half-castes’ were excluded from the provisions of the Act, in practice ‘quarter-castes’ and ‘octoroons’ were subject to it anyway, regardless of their lifestyle.
Haebich, A. (1992). Implementing the 1905 Aborigines Act: 1905-1911. In A. Haebich, For their own good: Aborigines and Government in the south west of Western Australia 1900-1940 (pp. 90-127). Nedlands, WA: UWA Publishing.
Following the successful passage of the 1905 Aborigines Act, members of the Western Australian Parliament felt that the state's honour had been restored. Believing adequate provision
had been made for the 'protection and care' of Aborigines, they turned their attention to more pressing matters of state.

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As a result of this indifference there were few real improvements in the administration of Aboriginal affairs.
Tomlinson, D. (2008). Too white to be regarded as Aborigines: An historical analysis of policies for the protection of Aborigines and the assimilation of Aborigines of mixed descent... Retrieved from http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/7/
For much of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, public policies for Western Australia’s Indigenous peoples were guided by beliefs that they were remnants of a race in terminal decline and that a public duty existed to protect and preserve them. If their extinction was unavoidable, the public duty was to ease their passing.

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The Aborigines Act 1905 vested the Chief Protector of Aborigines (after 1936 the Commissioner for Native Affairs), with lawful responsibility for the pursuit of that duty. All Aborigines caught by the terms of the Act, in
particular Aboriginal children under the age of 16, and after 1936 girls and women under the age of 21, were wards of the Chief Protector and the Act entrusted him with extensive powers for managing their lives.

Unhealthy Government Experiment

Perkins, R. (Producer), & Cole, B. (Director). (2008). Unhealthy government experiment [Television series episode]. In H. Pankhurst (Producer), First Australians. Sydney, Australia: SBS.

Summary: Jandamarra is born on a cattle station in the Kimberley in the 1970's. He trades life as a police tracker or resistance with his own people. Gladys Gilligan is one of more than 50,000 half-caste children plucked from her family and sent to a mission. Despite the efforts of the Chief Protector of Aborigines, AO Neville, she remains resolutely independant.